[plug] Chroot debian install on iPAQ target over nfs

Brad Campbell brad at wasp.net.au
Mon Jun 28 22:11:34 WST 2004


Just a heads up on some issues if anyone is masochistic enough to try this.

I use /chroot to mount my debian install
dpkg install debootstrab<blah blah>

Use a genuine debian version of bash. Busybox ash can't cope with debootstrap for some reason

/chroot/bin/bash debootstrap --arch arm sarge /chroot http://debian.mirrors.pair.com

chroot /chroot

Use knfsd instead of the user space server, there appears to be locking issues and the userspace 
server appears only to support nfs V2 which has issues with symlinks and debootstrap.

Ensure rpc.statd is running before you start. On familiar its nfs-common. You will need to start it 
by hand.

Swap over nfs is a bit of a problem. Create a swap file on the nfs server, mkswap it, then use swap 
over loop over nfs.

from within your debian chroot

dd if=/dev/zero of=/root/swap.file bs=1M count=200
mkswap /root/swap.file
losetup /dev/loop0 /root/swap.file
swapon /dev/loop0

Make sure you mount swap *before* running dselect! 64M of ram does not go far!

Written after much frustration and considerable Australian red wine.

Brad



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